Refrigerated dough or fresh dough, i.e., dough contained in a container and sold out of the refrigerated case at the grocery store, has long been a popular item. Typically, the dough is chemically leavened and formulated for storage in containers which will maintain the pressure generated by the leavening action of the leaveners in the dough. All a cook need do to prepare biscuits or the like from the contained dough is to open the container and place the dough in the oven and bake.
One problem attendant with such products is low baked specific volume, a typical average value of which is about 3.7 cc/gm. In the case of Pipin' Hot brand loaf as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,315 a typical baked specific volume is about 4.2 cc/gm. The disclosure of this patent is incorporated herein by reference. Additional leavening agents can be added to improve specific volume but can lead to excessive can pressure during storage and/or they can cause taste problems particularly with phosphate leaveners.
The present invention provides by a simple expedient a means for providing higher specific volume in the baked product.
In chemically leavened (Willoughby) dough system there has been known for a number of years a relationship between baked specific volume and packed dough specific volume. This general relationship is shown in the "without ethanol" line of FIG. 1. An increase in packed specific volume resulted in a decrease in baked specific volume. Since high specific volume baked products are desirable those skilled in this art have avoided using increased packed specific volumes because of the decrease in baked specific volume. Until this invention no one has been able to change this relationship and have used low packed specific volumes on the order of about 1.15 cc/gm in the container. Pipin' Hot brand loaf currently being sold has a target packed specific volume of 1.18 cc/gm.
High baked specific volumes are desirable and solutions have been proposed but have resulted in product negatives. Thus, there has been a long felt need in the industry but no solution has been achieved until the present invention. One proposed solution was higher levels of leavening, but this resulted in higher can pressures and the attendant problems of can blow up and more chemical taste. Further, the industry tried to keep the packed specific volume as low as possible but this could also increase can pressure and its problems.
A seemingly impossible problem has faced the industry and all attempts at solutions have met with little if any success. The present invention was the result of going in a direction directly opposite to what the art taught. Baked specific volumes of 5 cc/gm or higher were achieved with the invention. It was also found that baked specific volumes equal to that achieved in prior dough systems could be achieved with significantly lower can pressures a significant benefit when baked specific volume can be lower. It was unexpectedly found that by adding a volatilizable substance into a chemically leavened dough formulation and increasing the specific volume of the packed dough (contrary to the prior art) that significantly higher specific volume in the baked product could be achieved. As seen in the "with ethanol" line in FIG. 1 this combination resulted in a reversal of the prior art relationship between baked and packed specific volumes. Also, when the volatilizable substance is edible alcohol it provides upon baking, a pleasing aroma similar to that of a yeast-leavened product.